(Photo: BBC America) 
If you think the stuff that gets onto your screen in Doctor Who is out of this world, that’s nothing compared to what goes on behind-the-scenes.
OK, that’s hyperbole. Clearly nothing of the scale of an entire planet being hijacked in order to create a reality bomb has occurred to the production team, but if you dig about a bit, you’ll find near-death experiences, random naked men running about, suit jackets made of trousers and a strange reference to psychedelic drugs. There’s a LOT going on.
So consider this a roundup of near-misses, interesting choices and alternate realities for Doctor Who, in which the show barely makes it past it’s second story, Sarah Jane Smith is a forgotten footnote, and the tale of the Doctor’s early life is a clear and unwavering line that everyone understands from the start:
1. It would be fair to say that the Daleks are among the primary reasons we are still talking about Doctor Who in the 21st Century. They were the runaway stars of the show’s second ever story, creating “Dalek-mania,” a phenomenon including spin-off records, toys and the willful misuse of sink plungers all over the British Isles. However, had the BBC had their way, the Daleks would never have existed. Head of Drama Sydney Newman – the man who commissioned the show in the first place – thought they were just a robotic variation on the bug-eyed monster trope from 1950s B-movies, and network executive Donald Wilson considered the script for “The Daleks” to be among the worst things he had ever read. If the production team had had another script ready to go – any other script – it’s doubtful we’d have ever heard of Daleks, and it’s possible Doctor Who would never have gone on to be the longest running science fiction TV franchise in history.

2. And while we’re on the impact of the show, Dalek is one of several Doctor Who words that have made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. They are defined as “a member of a race of aggressive alien mutants in mobile armoured casings” and the word Dalek is said to be “frequently in extended, allusive, or similative use.” Which means people compare humans and Daleks quite a lot.
TARDIS and Cyberman are in there too, as is sonic screwdriver, which was introduced as recently as 2017.
3. All of David Tennant’s lovely brown pinstripe suits are made from trousers bought off the rack, and re-tailored. The brown pinstriped fabric used came from a pair of GAP trousers that David and costume designer Louise Page were particularly keen on. There was no corresponding jacket in the same fabric so Louise bought as many pairs of the trousers as she could, took them apart and used the fabric to make her own. This meant that the panels in the jacket could not be too wide, which may explain some of the unusual vents around the sides.
4 Actors playing the Doctor have always had trouble remembering the tech-talk their character is supposed to speak with great fluency. Each has had their own method of dealing with the issue. Third Doctor Jon Pertwee would have cue cards of jargon hidden on set, or insist on “reversing the polarity,” a phrase he could access with some confidence. And when called upon to issue a stream of numbers as interstellar (and inter-temporal) co-ordinates, Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) would often find himself reciting the phone number of the Doctor Who production office.
5. When Billie Piper left Doctor Who, there was a proposal put forward for a spin-off series along the lines of The Sarah Jane Adventures, called Rose Tyler: Earth Defence. Although she was interested in reprising her role at some point (and indeed has been back to the show twice since she left), Piper turned down the opportunity, preferring to build a more varied portfolio of work. The second killer blow to the idea came from Russell T Davies, who pointed out it would undermine the heartbreaking farewell between Rose and the Doctor in “Doomsday.”

6. The BBC didn’t try to register the TARDIS as a trademark (for merchandising rights and so forth) until 1996, some 33 years after the show had started, and seven years after it was cancelled in 1989. The Metropolitan Police, who had, as part of the wider police force, designed and commissioned the blue boxes the TARDIS is modelled on in the first place, challenged this application. But by the time the case came to trial in 2002, the Patent Office could find no evidence of a registered trademark by the police, and, noting that the BBC had been selling TARDIS merchandise for 30 years without police complaint, granted the trademark to the BBC. The fact that this means that any depiction of a police box is legally considered a TARDIS first, despite the TARDIS being modelled on the police box, is just one of those enjoyable logistical/temporal anomalies that Doctor Who tends to throw up from time to time.
7. Doctor Who’s first major location shoot outside of the British Isles came with a trip to Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, for the Fifth Doctor story “Planet of Fire.” Nicola Bryant was playing a scene in which her character, Peri Brown, was close to drowning, which prompted a passer-by to try and rescue her. This would be an awkward enough moment but for the fact that the would-be hero was a naturist. And, embarrassed and annoyed by the situation, he kept trying to spoil subsequent scenes by running naked through the back of the shot. Dealing with the Master would’ve been a walk in the park by comparison.
8. Speaking of whom, in the 1970s heyday of stories in which the Third Doctor faces off against the Master, there was a plan to reveal that the Master is actually the Doctor’s brother. This rather feeble idea – it’s a big universe, not everyone has to be related – was shelved after the sudden death of Roger Delgado, the First Master. But if it had been allowed to play out, the dynamic between, say, Twelve and Missy would have been VERY different.
9. The very first regeneration – which also wasn’t called that at the time – was a strictly practical decision. The First Doctor, William Hartnell, was in poor health and had to step down, but the show was proving to be such a hit, the BBC production team didn’t want to stop making it. So, according to a memo uncovered years after the event, the suggestion was put forward that the Doctor would experience a “metaphysical change.” This being 1966, on the cusp of the hippy era, the memo went on to explain: “It is as if he had had the L.S.D. drug and instead of experiencing the kicks, he has the hell and dank horror which can be its effect.”

10. Writers and deadlines… it’s a battle as old as time. But one particularly fraught conflict occurred when Anthony Steven wrote the Sixth Doctor’s first story, “The Twin Dilemma.” There’s a lot to cover; regeneration; the Doctor’s transformation into a grumpier, more arrogant character who actually tried to strangle his companion; the arrival of the rainbow coat costume, and it seems the script was slow in coming. So slow, in fact, that at one point Anthony claimed that his typewriter had exploded while he worked.
11. Sarah Jane Smith is always cited as one of the show’s most beloved companions, the only one to get her own, self-titled spin-off show, and the only one to make a return appearance in Doctor Who after the show was restarted in 2005. This is almost entirely due to the wonderful performances by Elisabeth Sladen, but the interesting thing is that Lis hadn’t originally got the part. An actress called Alice Walker was the first Sarah Jane, but due to concerns about her height (no, really) and a lack of chemistry with Jon Pertwee, she was replaced. Given how popular Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane would become, this means Alice Walker is officially the Pete Best of Doctor Who.  

12. Production near-misses must happen all the time in a show as explosive as Doctor Who, and yet there’s one backstage story that is especially blood-chilling. It seems that during the production of “The War Games,” Second Doctor Patrick Troughton were directed to their places and told there would be an explosion nearby. When they queried how close they would be standing, an explosives expert attempted to reassure them, but his scars and missing digits merely served to make the cast insist that they see a dry run of the effect before putting themselves in harm’s way. When the fuse detonated, a big block of stone flew at the place they’d been instructed to stand. Had they gone ahead as planned, the results could have been devastating.
Which story stands out to you as the most strange?